Paper Heart
by bleubirdsong
Summary: Tom Riddle has fallen down the rabbit hole but when he looks up, he doesn't see a hint of sky. Horcrux!Tom. No pairing.


When Tom had been human, it had been as if there had always been a wall between him and the rest of the world. It had been a clear wall; it could be said to have looked like glass except that glass is inevitably riddled with imperfections while this wall could almost have not existed at all. It wasn't perfectly straight, either. In fact, it could have been convex lens, considering how often Tom had looked in on the world as an impartial observer and had seen the little details that people thought that they could hide.

That separation was grand; Tom had been apart from everything, untouchable. His feelings and emotions were behind the safety of the perfect glass, unseen to everyone else as he watched and judged and acted as he saw fit.

One action, watch for the reaction. React according to the results of the previous experiments. That smile? Good, leave it; the woman is practically simpering. No, don't play shy in this case; seeming weak will not help for long. It had been a dance of reactions triggering actions as Tom had learnt to play the world as if it was his instrument.

It was different now, the wall. It existed but at the same time it was nothingness; perhaps there was nothing there but the memory of its presence. It was also somehow permeable...as if things could get through it now. Tom felt shattered at the revelation of that possibility because that wall had been his only defence and advantage for so long; living without it - if what he was doing could be called that - seemed unthinkable.

He did not foresee what binding himself to paper and ink would do to him. For some reason, he had assumed that everything would be the same. His mind would function just as it always did, he could still see and smell and taste… he had not realized that he would be aware. If that possibility had ever existed, it would be no different from what he had always known.

The pages that he was in, that he was, that was all that he could ever be… they contained so many layers. So many pages, finite but at the same time infinite. Within the old yellowed confines of his prison, his self, he was reeling because there was no end to his existence. It was as if he was constantly falling down the rabbit hole with no end in sight, and that when he looked up, he didn't see the light of the sky. The sky was where his magic was and yet it lurked out of sight.

Perhaps he was in a neverending loop where gravity would always move ahead of him. Or perhaps gravity did not exist at all in this strange place and Tom's mind and being was trying to occupy itself with something in that timeless infinity and had chosen this particular image and situation.

Sometimes, Tom thought that he could feel the chemicals in his skin, the finely tenderized strains of organic material stripped of half of their components until they had the potential to bend until they broke. Sometimes he thought he could feel the weight of the infinity that was him, pressing down on his soul but at the same time not, because his soul was infinity and how could infinity press down upon itself?

Time had begun to seem a strange concept. What use does a notebook have of time? It either exists or it doesn't and Tom knew that this particular notebook would always exist, would exist as long as Tom existed. That had the potential to be a very long time, Tom knew, seeing as his notebook - his Horcrux, he reminded himself to call it, himself - was intended to last for an eternity. Tom was in the rabbit hole without a beginning and end and time seemed like nothing but a fake idea that he had once given more weight than it deserved. Tom lay unchanging as the seconds and years passed by (for surely it had been years already) and he fell into himself.

Memories would drift to the forefront of Tom's mind and he thought that he could feel them etching their existence in invisible ink across his whole infinity. They would exist at the same time (time again? or moment of existence) as his endless fall and then would disappear within a moment to play wherever they played when Tom was trapped in his own hell.

If Tom tried very hard, later feeling almost brittle, he could bring back memories into the forefront of his being and luxuriate in the faint impression of the taste of tea and the smell of flowers in the air. His pages would become feelings and Tom could, just for a second, recall what it meant to be not a notebook, not infinity or paper pages, but a human. A wizard who had felt the dance of magic in his heart even as the world tried to beat it out of him and eyes would scorch like fire that could hurt him no longer.

A thousand glass walls, Tom thought or perhaps knew, as he didn't quite have the same facilities as he did back when thoughts were more than arbitrary terms to describe truths. An infinite amount of glass walls. He could reflect on the world he remembered better than ever, but those glass walls were now trapping him in this form, unable to respond, to form, or change. One wall had been superior distance and an advantage over everyone else. An infinity blurred into yellow Muggle paper as the perfect glass's imperfections compounded an infinite amount of times and obscured his sight.

He didn't want the walls anymore, Tom realized, _knew_ from one bit of paper to the little bit of paper on the other side of infinity. They were damaging him, keeping him confined and immortality made no sense anymore because if this what immortality was like, then he didn't want it. Perhaps the other half of himself out there in the world made better use of his immortal life, but at what cost? Dooming half of himself to this eternal hell of being but not being was too high a price. Tom wished for _out._

A short eternity later, Tom felt a change.

Something had happened and had shaken the tedium of his existence. He could not figure out exactly what had changed but awareness crept in towards him in strands of organic matter.

Then, the rabbit hole fell apart.

It was beautiful, Tom decided. It was as if he had stopped falling and the rabbit hole had split in two and then combined into one dark hole. As Tom felt something impact him and was assaulted by a feeling so many times stronger than any of his memories, he saw a hint of blue in that darkness.

It was ink, Tom thought, dazed. It was ink, there was an emotion dangling just slightly out of reach. Something scraped itself along Tom's surface and he _felt_ as words and meaning were conveyed with just the simplest of words.

_My name is Ginny Weasley and this is my diary._

At first, Tom felt a little bit offended because he was no common diary but this all faded into the background at his delight that here was someone interacting with him. The tedium broke like a glass wall and Tom found that he could see clearer than he ever could remember as a notebook.

Tom found himself replying, recycling that ink that he somehow absorbed and putting his words across his pages in ink that was visible for the very first time.

_Hello. My name is Tom Riddle._

Tom didn't question his actions; he knew it must be foolish to show that he was alive and sentient in some way so early. If this Ginny was scared off…

_You talk!_

_Yes, I do, _Tom wrote in a hurry. _I am a talking diary._

_That's amazing! _the letters danced along Tom's pages in a slow, careful script. _Well, I'm eleven years old and I just found this diary in my textbooks. I'm so lucky! I'm so excited about going to Hogwarts this year…_

Tom absorbed all the ink that he could manage and began throwing his replies out there to the gullible girl, drawing on the faint memories of imitation and responses to craft a web into which this Ginny could fall; fall instead of him because he was tired and he was _done _falling.

All the while, the rabbit hole grew smaller and the patch of sky grew just a tiny bit wider.

* * *

_Apologies to all my loyal readers on the Magicweaver; exams have been killing me and the next chapter is expected to take a bit longer to get out. This is a little something to show you all that I'm not dead and that I'm still writing. _


End file.
